


Indefatigable

by AFireInTheAttic



Series: inseperable [4]
Category: Teen Wolf (TV)
Genre: Cooking, Cooking Lessons, F/M, Mr. Yukimura continues to expand Scott's food horizons
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-02-23
Updated: 2014-02-23
Packaged: 2018-01-13 13:53:12
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,268
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1228864
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/AFireInTheAttic/pseuds/AFireInTheAttic
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>“What can I do for you, Mr. McCall?” Mr. Yukimura raises an eyebrow and crosses his arms casually.</p>
<p>“Um…teach me to make kimchi?” Scott says hesitantly.</p>
<p>Mr. Yukimura beams. “Oh, Scott. I thought you’d never ask.”</p>
            </blockquote>





	Indefatigable

Scott lingers after class one afternoon. Kira looks at him oddly, but he gestures for her to go on.

She raises an eyebrow, and mumbles, “You better not be asking my dad for permission to date me.”

He grins a little because he has her Dad’s enthusiastic encouragement. Anyway, he knows enough from his mother, Allison, and late night texting with Lydia, that it’s annoying when girls get treated like the property of their father. So he shakes his head and carefully walks to Mr. Yukimura’s desk.

“What can I do for you, Mr. McCall?” Mr. Yukimura raises an eyebrow and crosses his arms casually.

“Um…teach me to make kimchi?” he says hesitantly.

Mr. Yukimura beams. “Oh, Scott. I thought you’d never ask.”

* * *

Kira sits across the table from Scott and her father, smirking. She’s not participating, because according to her she is awful at cooking. “Baking I can do,” she says, and shrugs. “Pretend I’m like…Peeta. I’ll give you cheese buns if you want.”

“As long as he’s wearing a condom while receiving said cheese buns, it’s okay with me,” her father says, and clasps his hand over Scott’s shoulder.

“Dad, _no_ ,” she protests. “Just…make your kimchi.”

He shrugs goodnaturedly, and hands Scott a head of cabbage. “Start peeling leaves off.”

Scott does so, and smiles at Kira across the table.

She grins back.

“Don’t get distracted, Scott,” Mr. Yukimura chides. “Cooking requires one’s full attention. This is why Kira is supposedly so bad at it. If she’d just focus…” He winks at his daughter.

She makes a face at him. “It’s not about focus, Dad. It’s about passion. I just don’t have passion for…fermenting cabbage.”

“You seem to have a bunch of passion for eating it,” he says smugly.

“Totally different,” she says, rolling her eyes. She catches Scott’s eyes and winks at him.

“I’m thinking about a hen baking bread…” Mr. Yukimura gently moves Scott’s head until he’s facing the cabbage again.

“Real life isn’t a fairy tale. Anyway, I’m your daughter. You’re supposed to provide for me.”

“Oh, of course,” he says, clasping his hands in front of his heart dramatically. “I’d never let you starve. It’s just such a pity that you’re letting a lack of passion keep you from following in my footsteps.”

She purses her lips. “So if I learned to cook, I’d be following in your footsteps?”

“Yes,” he replies. “Almost done, Scott?”

“Uh,” Scott says, frowning down at his steadily growing pile of cabbage. “I guess?”

Kira reaches across the table to pick through the leaves. “I think it’s enough. There’s only four of us eating. Unless—did you invite your mom?”

“Oh, um, she’s working the night shift again,” he says, shrugging. He’s peeled nearly ¾ of the head of cabbage, some pieces more clumsy than others, but over all nothing is terribly done. “But she says thanks for the invitation, and that she’d love to another time.”

“We’ll work something out,” Mr. Yukimura says, and pats his shoulder again. “Okay, so let’s move on to the next step—weighing the cabbage.” He points to a small kitchen scale and sets a glass bowl on it. “We have to set this as zero temporarily to truly weigh the cabbage.”

“Like in chemistry,” Scott agrees, and then dumps the cabbage into the bowl.

Mr. Yukimura shrugs. “I haven’t studied chemistry in years.”

“Like in chemistry,” Kira confirms.

“Sure. Anyway, now we need to add salt—5% of what we just weighed. It will probably come out to about a ¼ of a cup…”

“That’s a lot of salt.”

“It’s a lot of cabbage.”

They set the cabbage up in a large bowl, sprinkle the salt over it, and cover it in brine. “Now we wait,” Mr. Yukimura intones.

“How long?” Scott wonders, looking into the bowl.

“Well, usually 24 hours. But we’ll just do it for two. Why don’t the two of you watch a movie or something?” He waves them out of the kitchen and cleans up the mess.

“You wanna see something?” Kira asks, taking his hand with both of hers just outside the door. She grins at him hopefully.

He grins back at her. “Of course.”

Despite what her dad likes to tease them about, they don’t actually have sex very often. Kira’s drive, while present, isn’t really high, and while Scott enjoys it, he’s pretty comfortable with the idea of never doing it again. So he doesn’t worry when she pulls him down the hall and into her bedroom even though her parents are in the house. _If_ they were going to have sex, they’d be doing it at his house, because his mom works more than Kira’s parents do—or in any case, there’s only one of her, and two of Kira’s parents. One of them is bound to be around most of the time, and even if they’ve been supportive, it’s still _weird_.

“Come on, come on,” she giggles, pulling him to sit on her bed and kneeling next to him. “Okay, watch,” she says, lifting the cover of her lamp off and carefully stretching out a hand until her fingers are nearly touching the bulb. Electricity zaps out from her finger tips to the glass, and the coiled wire inside lights up.

“How are you doing that?” Scott wonders, leaning forward. He doesn’t touch her, because he remembers learning about how electricity travels through human bodies when he was in elementary school. They stood in a big circle holding hands, and his teacher had shocked one of the students. The whole group had jumped, feeling the effects.

He thinks it’s kind of cute and perfect that Kira has these abilities, because there’s something undeniably contagious about her happiness.

“I don’t know,” she says, drawing her hand back. The bulb dies. “The first time I did it, it blew up. Mom was a little bit mad,” she confesses. “But it’s okay now. I figured out how to do it.”

“You’re really good at that,” he says, reaching out to play with her hair a little. “Figuring things out.”

She blushes and pushes her face into his shoulder. “Don’t tease me.”

“No, seriously,” he insists, curling an arm around her shoulder. He doesn’t mind having a conversation with the back of her head, if it means she’s going to basically cuddle with him. “You’re smart. Remember when you trained yourself with a sword you stole from your mom?”

“Shut up,” she mumbles.

“No, it was so cool.”

“Stop.”

“But I have to tell you how perfect you are—“

“Scott, _no_.”

“Kira, _yes_.”

She huffs and pushes him down until he’s laying on the bed and she can cuddle up against him. For a while, they’re still, Scott looking up at the ceiling and Kira idly tracing the pattern of his t-shirt. It’s one he borrowed from Stiles the other day, which is the only reason he’d ever wear a shirt that insisted he was a “stud muffin”.

After several minutes of her running her fingers over the muffin, she stirs. “You’re good at that, too.”

“What?”

“Figuring things out. Seeing what no one else does.”

He shifts, tries to look down at her. It’s not really possible in this position, so he flops back again. “What do you mean?”

“Like…you were the only one who didn’t think I was evil. Even Stiles…”

He shrugs, jostling her a little. “Yeah, but…if anyone else took the time to talk to you, they’d have known, too.”

She huffs. “That’s not the only time. I’ve heard about before, when you and Deaton put the mountain ash in Gerard’s pills, and when you figured out how to anchor yourself without Allison…” Her hand spreads on his chest, just over his heart, and she presses a kiss to his chest, just next to her fingers. “Don’t count your own achievements as nothing just to make me feel better.”

“Achievements,” he sighs, a little bitter. “Those aren’t really…achievements.”

“So what is an achievement?” she asks, and sits up. She leaves her hand on his chest, presses down slightly when he makes a move to follow her into sitting.

“I don’t know,” he sighs, relaxing into her bed again. “I’ll let you know when I actually achieve something.”

She sighs a little and starts carding her fingers through his hair. “I know you’re still doing the whole ‘Be a Better Scott McCall Program’ thing, but I think…I think you should know that you’re already pretty great, and the fact that you’re _trying_ to improve yourself all the time is kind of it’s own achievement. And you actually like my weirdo dad.”

He does roll his eyes at that. “Don’t act like _you_ don’t like your ‘weirdo dad.’”

She shrugs. “I have to. He’s my dad.” She grimaces and shakes her head. “Not that—I didn’t mean _you_ have to like your dad. It’s not…I just meant—“

He sits up and kisses her cheek, nuzzling her a little bit. “It’s okay. I know what you meant.”

She sighs and leans into him. “I just want you to know that I think you’re really great.”

“I think _you’re_ really great.”

“You could just say thank you,” she says, but she smiles anyway.

He blows a raspberry into her face, and says, “Where’s the fun in that?”

* * *

Mr. Yukimura gestures calmly to the pile of vegetables in front of him. “Okay, so now we need to chop some vegetables. Kira, think you can do this without messing up?”

“I don’t know. I might cut my fingers off,” Kira sasses, but she takes the proffered knife and starts slicing carrots.

“Focus, grasshopper,” he says.

“Don’t be a stereotype, please,” she sighs.

“Scott, start in on the scallions,” he continues, ignoring Kira. “You should slice them, like this.” He demonstrates briefly, and then passes the knife and vegetables to Scott. “And I’ll do the mustard greens.”

After, they dump all the vegetables in a bowl, and without hesitating Kira starts grating the ginger root—something Scott has seen in supermarkets, but not actually seen used. It’s kind of exciting. For all that Kira claims to be bad at cooking, she seems pretty comfortable doing this sort of work.

“This is daikon,” Mr. Yukimura says, showing him the big vegetable.

“It looks like a white carrot,” he says, nonplussed.

Mr. Yukimura shrugs in response. “It’s not really like that. Parsnips are more of a white carrot.”

“Never had that, either,” Scott says with a shrug.

“Oh, Scott,” he sighs, as he takes the grater from Kira and starts grating the daikon. “You are tragically uninformed about great food. I will just have to keep teaching you. I wouldn’t want Kira to end up married to a man who can’t make a meal from every continent, if not every country.”

“Dad,” Kira whines. “We’re just 17!”

“And lots of people meet their future spouses before they’re 18! I’m using statistics.”

“That was in the past, as you’ve told me before,” Kira insists, fists on her hips. “When people didn’t move around as much!”

“Yeah, but you two are obviously perfect for each other.”

Scott beams.

Kira catches sight of him. The corners of her mouth twitch, and she resolutely looks away from him so she can keep scowling at her dad.

“Start pressing the garlic, Scott,” Mr. Yukimura says, and winks at him.

* * *

After they mix all the ingredients together, Scott is kind of stunned to find out they have to wait three days before eating it, but he embraces it easily enough. “So what are we doing for dinner tonight?” he wonders.

“Pizza,” Mr. Yukimura says cheerfully, and calls in the order.

Mrs. Yukimura comes home from work a little before the pizza delivery boy arrives. She’s wearing a very carefully tailored pantsuit and a small smile. “Hello,” she says smoothly, kissing her husband on the cheek, touching her daughter’s arm briefly, and smiling at Scott. She doesn’t like to touch people, as far as Scott can tell, which he absolutely respects. He’s just kind of glad Kira isn’t the same, because he really likes cuddling.

She’s scary in the same way Mrs. Argent was scary—only not exactly, because Mrs. Yukimura had listened when Scott insisted that he could help Stiles without killing him. She’d never tried to kill him, and actually seemed happy to know her daughter was dating a werewolf.

He really admires her, actually. She’s strong in a way he’ll never be, stoic when anyone else would be having an emotional break down. And she does light up around her family, like when Kira finally masters a new skill—maternal pride is _not_ a foreign look for Mrs. Yukimura.

Scott loves that.

If Mr. Yukimura is right, and he and Kira are going to end up married, he doesn’t think he could have found a better family to marry into.

* * *

Three days later, Scott discovers that he doesn’t really like kimchi, but he _does_ like Mr. Yukimura’s rice. Kira cracks up at his face when he tries the first bite, and then scoops the rest of his onto her plate. She gives him extra green beans.

Mr. Yukimura shakes his head sadly. “Now you can never call me father.”

Mrs. Yukimura rolls her eyes. “Give him time,” she says. To Scott, she offers, “In some ways, kimchi is an acquired taste.”

“Then I’ll keep trying,” he says, and steals a bite back from Kira’s plate.

She rolls her eyes, but when her parents aren’t looking, she leans over and whispers, “That’s what I like best about you.”


End file.
